There are thousands of sites out there that will give you help and advice on how to generate traffic. Some work, others do not, but one thing you will notice if you trawl through them, is that they will quite often contradict each other, giving the novice no real chance.

So what does work?

You will have heard of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Here's what that means:

All search engines have things called 'bots' (short for 'robots'). These are actually software programs that search through the web looking for sites to include in their listings. The searching is called 'spidering' (through the web - half bad joke, half description). There are billions of pages online so no search engine will list them all. To determine which sites they do include, they use several techniques. SEO strategies are designed to bring your site to the notice of the bots in such a way that the bot thinks it's a good site to list.

These techniques include reading the tags in your HTML (read about tags here). They include scanning your content to determine if the content matches the tags. For example, if you put words like 'online banking' in your keywords tag, but your site is about horses, they wont match and the SE will ignore you. The same is true of your description tag.

SE's also like sites which have a lot of other sites linking to them. If there are a lot of sites linking to your site, then (thinks the bot) it must be a popular and useful site. There are a few ways you can get sites to link to yours. Joining forums aboiut your topic is one. Say your site IS about Horses; you join horse-flavoured forums and make several posts. Where you can, you mention your web address - if the forum allows url's in your signature - use it. Other sites about horses may put a link to your site in exchange for you putting a link to them on yours.

You may have seen something called PR (Page Rank). A brand new site will have a PR of 0 (zero). The higher the PR, the more sites there are linking to yours. Sites with high PR's will always make it up the listings - but you can use this. If you get a link to your site from a site with a high PR, you're more likely to get higher yourself. If you can get links from government, academic or charity sites, these are the berst links to have. If your site is about horses, talk to horse charities and get them to link to your site in exchange for a link to theirs. Charity sites always appreciate good links to themselves.

There are so many so-called SEO strategies that keeping on top of them can be a full time job. This is probably not what you wanted to hear. The two strategies described above are the two most useful.

You can also buy listings. Basically that means you pay a small amount (from 1 US cent per click) for an SE or a directory to advertise your site if it includes a visitor-entered keyword in your keyword list (both your keyword tag and the list you give to the directory site). If someone on a directory site types 'horses' into the search box and you have 'horses' in your keyword list then your advert is listed. If the visitor then clicks your ad to go to your site, you pay the directory 1 cent. Be aware though that this is a bit like an auction - you can offer to pay more per click which will get you further towards the top of the list. Some people will pay $100 per click - and if you're selling horses, this may be a worthwhile amount to pay - each click is a potential lead, a potential sale.

There are hundreds of search engines. Google, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo and MSN are probably the best known but there are hundreds of others. All of the big search engines also spider these other search engines and so you should attempt to get on as many as possible. There is a (free) built-in Search Engine submission for all edm-i hosted sites, but the internet abounds with paid-for and free submission services/programs. Our suggestion is to try them all - BUT remember that duplicate submissions to the same search engine can see them refuse to list you. Why? Because in the early days, people would set up automatic submissions so that a site would be submitted lots of times. This is now filtered and too many submissions may look (to the bot) like you're trying to force the issue.

You should also be aware that it may take some time to get your site listed. This is due to the sheer number of sites to be spidered. And, if you are getting links to your site added to other sites, it will take the bots some time to count the links to your site. Be patient. Google's bots for example, take a full month to spider the whole web - not because it's not very good - it is. It's because of the number of sites out there.

You will find an overwhelming number of 'e-books' promising you the earth in terms of advice about getting listed. They all tend to look the same - and here's why. The strategies for selling these e-books are all pretty basic. They all follow the same rules:

Rule 1 : Trash the opposition - say something like 'you've seen the rest and they're all rubbish..time to try ours.

Rule 2 : Shout, shout, shout about how good this product is (whilst continuing to follow rule 1), using BIG letters and bright colours.

Rule 3 : Tell them how REALLY EASY it is to earn LOTS of money, or get THOUSANDS OF VISITORS to your site,

Rule 4 : Don't tell the price until the sales talk has convinced them. And when they do, it's always at a 'knock-down' price. Or for this week only. Of if you buy now, you'll get XYZ free (worth some ridiculous amount).

Are they worth it? The vast majority of them are not. The information on this page alone could cost you $50. Most of them re-hash what you already know, or can surmise, or can get free from other sites (like this one). Having said that, some do contain a lot of useful information and $50 is not a lot to pay for some real, good advice. However you do not have to go trawling through e-books (at $50 - $1000 per time) because we've done it for you. The only book we recommend at the moment DOES cost $50 (well, a bit less actually). The site that sells it DOES follow all four rules above. And yes, if you click the link below and buy the thing, we DO get a small kickback. BUT the reason we include just the one link (and not lots, hoping you'll go buy them all) is that, despite the awful arrogance of the author, despite the obvious hype hype hype, it IS for real and it IS the best around.

Here's the link: The Rich Jerk. Yes he's a jerk. Yes he's rich. The crux is that this guy will tell you how to make a lot of money on the web - BUT if that's not what you want (like you just want to advertise your site to people who like horses and not to make money) the SEO advice and traffic generation ideas are still spot on!

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